Case Study 1 — Zach Schendel, Director of UX Research at Netflix
Hi, everyone! So recently I attended this webinar organized by InVision with Zach Schendel of Netflix Design Team and I found it very informative and interesting.
In the webinar, he discusses the evolution of Netflix’s design and how they went about in deciding the design changes. I am sharing my notes on the webinar here. I have basically organized the information here so that I do not miss out on anything good.
I will be posting 3 blogs to cover this webinar, segmented across the 3 case studies that he discusses.
TV Innovation at Netflix
TV is the major platform for Netflix. Though there are a website and mobile app as well. But still, even now TV is the most important platform for Netflix.
Take a look at the design innovations with time
The titles were displayed in static image formats
This is the base design on which the Netflix design team has been iterating for the last 5 years
Zach goes on to tell how Netflix has moved from the 2013 design to the 2018 design. How did they understand which elements to work on? How were the design decisions made?
Case Study 1
In case study 1, Zach discusses why they decided to have a full bleed video on the top 2/3rd portion of the screen space.
They wanted to understand what kind of user context people were in when they were engaging with video entertainment. So they created this In the Moment survey, that they called the Moment of Truth survey.
Process:
- First thing — they asked people when likely they will be watching videos. Whether at home or outside, whether on TV, Smartphone, Netflix Live TV, Youtube etc
- Second thing — they sent the users Push notification survey and Text message survey in that exact moment, with a series of questions to describe the moment they are in.
What the survey wanted to understand:
- Given all of the context variables and many more, what are the drivers of choosing Netflix in the Moment of Truth
- What are the drivers of not choosing Netflix in the Moment of Truth
Findings of the Moment of Truth survey:
- Half of all the video moments involve 2 or even more people, particularly on TV.
Prime Time Moment — Moment of Truth 1
Couple watching intensely their favorite show in the night time, while the baby is asleep in the other room. Usually, in these situations, the user(s) know what exactly they are going to watch before they sit down to watch.
Conflict in this situation — when the husband and wife want to watch different shows and the shows are very different from each other in terms of content.
Finding a common show for both or an intersection of both kinds of content is a challenge.
At Netflix, it is a challenge to provide series/movies that will appeal to both the people in the house. The content has to be an intersection/average of two very different kinds of content.
Hence the choosing process is a vital function in Netflix.
The old Netflix UI made it difficult for the viewers to choose a show. There was no video, hence they had to read the show description to choose the show. Plus this leads to a lot of conversation and friction in the choice process.
This is a fairly unique TV pain point. Though it happens on other platforms as well, like the website, mobile.
Babysitter Moment — Moment of Truth 2
Typical weekend morning, kid watching their favorite show while dad/mom prepares breakfast. The kid knows exactly what they want to watch and they want to pay attention to it.
The Netflix research team conducted an eye-tracking study with kids below 8 yrs of age to understand which areas in the screen they were paying most attention to
Eye Tracking Study with kids from 5–7 yrs of age
Findings:
- Kids below 8 yrs of age can’t read properly
- They are only seeing the images here. There is no eye attention over the text
- While choosing a program they are only depending on visual content — images, videos etc
Takeaways
Videos give meaning to content that static UI in the form of static images and text cannot. You cannot get all the information from text or image.
Videos help people in groups as well as kids, decide what is this show? and why should I watch it?
It’s important to explore the real user context. For this Netflix team went to users houses and also made them send video recordings of the moment of truth (when they are actually watching Netflix). While analyzing the data both quantitatively and qualitatively.
Quantitatively — prediction of the kinds of drivers that are present in the Netflix wins and losses.
Qualitatively — what people are going through when they are trying to choose either in groups or with kids
During this process, they uncovered things — user pain points and unmet needs that their current designs are not satisfying. And these can be inspiration for new innovations. In this case, it’s the Full Bleed Video — which helps impart meaning to what that the title is and why they should watch it.
Watch the full video here — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld7RfeZNtXs&feature=youtu.be
